When a teenage Monty Python fan wrote a letter to his hero John Cleese he barely expected a reply, let alone an absolutely hilarious one.

Matt Hyde wrote to Cleese back in the 80s, when he was 14, asking if he had a fan club he could join.

Here's his reply:

Cleese said: "I am afraid I’m much too important to write notes to people like you.

"Please remember that I am very very very very very very important.

"However, there is no John Cleese fan club (despite my importance) because they were all murdered in 1983 by Michael Palin’s fan club."

Even better, he later received another letter - this time a hand written one from Palin.

This one said: “I’m sorry John Cleese should consider his fans as ‘murdered’ by us in 1983. I think it was a merciful release for these poor deluded victims. I am healthy, well, and have no worries about bein….”

The letter ends abruptly with Palin's handwriting scrawling off the page. At the bottom, it reads "Signed for Michael Palin in his absence, Eric Idle".

Life-long fan Hyde, now the Chief Executive of the UK Scout Association, posted the hilarious correspondence on Twitter as he prepared to see the Python Live (mostly) show at London's O2.

The letters have since gone viral - trending in the UK and clocking up nearly 7,000 retweets between them.